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Palmdale, CA.
We've had bears come all the way through the town to get to the airfield.. about 15 miles from the Angeles National Forest, crossing highways, the aqueduct, and generally surviving modern traffic. I've seen 3 raccoons, all which failed "Street Crossing 101" miserably recently.
This track, wasn't made by a house cat!
I've a -larger- track, most likely that a bear.

One problem here is that only zoo experts know anything about the various species of non-domestic cats. The only things running loose here are Felis domesticus and Felis sylvestris. I'd have to look it up to have the first clue the difference between a cougar, a panther, a puma, a bobcat, a leopard, a leopard cat and all the rest of them, never mind their behaviour patterns. I notice Marduk spoke of puma and panther almost interchangeably at one point.

I don't think the big cat nutters are even very clear about what species they're postulating. Most of them have probably never seen a real specimen of any of these in their lives. I get the impression that one "big cat" sighting is the same as another to them, and that a report of a leopard cat directly supports their claims of puma presence.

I don't know how anyone here is in a position to know what a cougar or a panther kill looks like. The only specimens of these are in zoos and wildlife parks, and they eat butchermeat and knacker meat. So unless any of these "experts" has spent time in the USA or Canada or Africa or somewhere, I don't know how they can be sure of what they're saying.

In contrast, the experts consulted for that document appear genuinely familiar with the animals they're describing. I only watched the beginning of the clip, and I confess I didn't notice the spraying (and I didn't know cougars don't do that). But I did think that the cats were a lot closer to the camera than the tree, and that asking the husband to go and stand by the tree was deceptive.

Also, I've got some pics of wild turkey I took in a very similar field in Michigan last year. I just looked at them to gauge the appearance of the stubble, and the comparison suggests to me that whoever took the cat footage might have been hunkered down closer to the ground, which would of course make the cats appear bigger.

You could do a similar trick with the Helensburgh footage and that railway marker post that appears in many of the frames. But frankly, it's over 70 miles and I'm not that keen! I wonder what the US experts would make of that clip?

Rolfe.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

I only just noticed this post of his from the first page that I overlooked earlier.

Originally Posted by Marduk

ah, I think this is a domestic housecat, but I also think that the UK now has big cats as a native species. This is because I have researched this in depth before.

That's kind of strange, because I really, really thought that he'd only looked at it for the first time on Wednesday. He seemed so unfamiliar with what he was citing, I was sure he was only parroting material he'd just read for the first time and been over-impressed by.

This will have to wait till he gets back now, but Marduk, could you clarify whether you still think "big cats" are a native species in Britain in 2009 or not? I'd be really, really interested to know what it was that originally led you to that conclusion, after your in-depth research, and exactly what (if anything) has caused you to reconsider. I'd also like to know which actual species of cat or cats you thought were present, and where.

I'm sorry I didn't realise how much in-depth research you'd already done, and if I didn't give you the opportunity to present your conclusions and your evidence, then I apologise. I'd also like to know, if you have altered your opinion as a result of our discussion, what it mainly was that caused you to change your mind.

On a wider note, it seems to me that one very good way to get a handle on this would be to interrogate the VIDA database by geographical area (post code?) and the subset of "trauma/fracture" diagnoses that are seen to be predator attack from the original reports. Absence of the sort of numbers that would inevitably be seen if one or more large carnivores were living in our ecosystem would be pretty telling, I'd think.

The thing is, absence is what such a request would find. The whole point of the VIDA returns is to allow the epidemiologists to spot significant causes of livestock morbidity, and in particular, patterns that suggest something weird is going on (like a new disease starting up). The idea that this system would completely not have noticed the amount of meat consumed by families of pumas roaming the fields is a bit of a stretch, to be polite.

Rolfe.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

My Grandmother's back garden is about 30 metres behind the trees in the background of the video shown on the BBC's (British Broadcasting not the Big Cat Society) website.

Originally Posted by Rolfe

Unless, of course, we have an invisible ghost panther that only slips through the interdimensional void to have one quick chomp, then disappears again....

Rolfe.

You may be onto something. The man who spotted the Helensburgh cat works at Faslane; maybe they are covering up a leak of some mutagenic substance that turns ordinary house cats into interdimensional invisible ghost panthers.

The cougar, estimated at 200 to 220 pounds and over 7 feet in length, was run over when it leapt in front of a pickup truck driven by Arizona resident Marshall Rader on Highway 64 between Williams and Valle, Arizona.

Those photos were spread with incorrect locations added. Killed in Arizona by a truck and was probably without any tag. A local cat. But a hoaxer might claim it was killed in the east and was 1000 miles from "home". This is what people do in the climate of Cougar Mania. There are lots of hoaxes like this. The common theme is to tell people the picture was taken in the east.

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

This has been an interesting discussion. I'm quite curious though - what do the people who believe that there are black panthers, cougars etc. roaming the English countryside actually want? Do they want law enforcement to hunt them all down, or do they just want someone to go along with their (probable) fantasy? Or do they want something else entirely?

I suppose it is fun in a strange sort of way to scare yourself thinking there are cougars out there. But you know, a person could just go somewhere that there really ARE cougars or what have you. Then you don't have to pretend - you'll be somewhere that the cat really does have a prey base, and where you can really find traces of them, and where they really have some space.

We've got them here of course and I've even seen them. Every time I've seen one though it was dead, because there is a limited hunt here for them, and you see it strapped to the top of the guy's car or in the bed of a pickup truck. Never lost a sheep or a goat to a cougar; I've only ever lost them to domestic dogs. Cougars preferentially hunt deer, at least in this area.

Here's a little conundrum for the Bigfooters. The above photo isn't "real", of course. It portrays Felicity after her death and appointment with the taxidermist. I'm just curious about the provenance. I'm inclined to believe it might be as real as the Cottingley Fairies - that is, not manipulated. I think it's perfectly possible they took the stuffed cat into a street, put her on a bench, and photographed her with a couple of interested onlookers, as a publicity stunt for the museum or something.

However, it could be photoshopped. And I'm not sure where the background is, but it looks more likely to be Inverness than Cannich. The apparent age of the picture seems deceptive. Felicity didn't die till the mid-1980s as far as I know, so the whole picture can't be older than that. I think the use of black and white film (or is it a colour pic rendered in black and white?) makes it appear older than it really is. Or has someone photoshopped a picture of the late Felicity on to an older photograph? A car nut might be able to date the models on display in the car park.

I'm just curious, as I can't find the provenance of the image beyond its presence on the British Big Cats web site, where Marduk took it from.

Anybody know anything about it?

Rolfe.

deleted

__________________"I would give my right arm to be ambidextrous" - My Mate Dave
" How do you expect me to use my initiative if you wont tell me what to do?" - Dave again

Walking out back, I noticed a smallish vertebrae lying on the path. After looking around a bit, I assembled this animal.
I believe it's either a dog or a coyote, that was hit by a car on the nearby highway, and managed to get about 100 feet away before it died.
From the chalkiness of the bones, it's been there a while.

I notice Marduk spoke of puma and panther almost interchangeably at one point.

It's done here too. There are many different common names for Puma concolor. You will even find the scientific name as Felis concolor. The use of panther is most common in the east. The isolated and endangered population in Florida is 'officially' called Florida Panther.

There are plenty of eyewitness reports of P. concolor in states for which there is no modern confirmation of existence, let alone a breeding population. These are regions which once had these cats but they were determined to be extirpated long ago. Vast spans of time with no bodies or other physical evidence. All the true signs that would indicate their presence... missing. The Cougar Network website will show you the confirmations. But the local folks insist that they are there. They have nothing more to show for it than the UK folks in spite of this animal long ago being common in their parts.

But then the fun really gets started. We get lots of reports of "black panthers". Hmmm... do you guys mean black leopard or black jaguar? Not really. Many come right out and say they mean a black P. concolor. Wait a second. We really don't have any confirmation that Puma ever shows this melanism. It certainly occurs with the leopard and jaguar, and other felids. But not the cougar. What is going on here? An undocumented color phase of Puma is being seen all over rural America with regional "hotspots". How big are they? Big. "You think I would say it was a black panther if it wasn't panther-sized?" So, you see this is strictly a cultural phenomenon. They may be seeing black housecats or even dogs. Oh, there really could be escaped or released melanistic leopards or jaguars. But so many of them all over the place? No dead ones ever? C'mon.

Quote:

In contrast, the experts consulted for that document appear genuinely familiar with the animals they're describing. I only watched the beginning of the clip, and I confess I didn't notice the spraying (and I didn't know cougars don't do that). But I did think that the cats were a lot closer to the camera than the tree, and that asking the husband to go and stand by the tree was deceptive....and the (turkey) comparison suggests to me that whoever took the cat footage might have been hunkered down closer to the ground, which would of course make the cats appear bigger.

You should watch the whole thing. There is another clip shown near the end and it stars a moggie as well. Of course the error made by the experts is in locating the position of the two cats. Indeed the cats are much closer to the camera than the model subjects during the analysis. They are within the stubble field, not at the edge 5 feet from the tree. But as you see from the critics - you do not need to measure those cats to know that they aren't cougars. I knew instantly that they were housecats. You'll see a wildlife expert guy (holding the eagle) who says they are cougars. He doesn't know what he is talking about. Let's put that guy into Thunderdome with the cougar biologists and the rest of the peer reviewers. Better bring your eagle. Anyway, if those two cats were jet black, the tech experts would be forced to declare them black leopards or jaguars. Nah, they could just say black panthers. There are plenty of reports of black panthers in Michigan.

So why is it that the only video evidences for cougars in Michigan show housecats instead? Because there are no videos of real cougars in Michigan. A state with cougars reported from almost every county and they are supposed to be breeding. The main claim is that they were never extirpated before being declared as such. They have always been there. No dead ones, shot, roadkill, film or video? How can that be? You have to ask them.

Quote:

It would depend on how it was hit.

That dead cougar looks pretty good. Internal injuries I suspect. I can just picture his cougar soul rising up to the sky...

Welcome to Cougar Heaven. What's your name?

I'm Rowfellupf.

What happened to you?

I was hit by a truck.

Well, you look great, Rowf!

Thanks. Everything sorta popped inside me, but I was still pretty good on the outside. For a fraction of a second, before I died, I could taste yesterday's doe.

Sweet. Let me introduce you to some of the other Puma Angels. Oh, did you have any questions since you are new here?

Yes. Where are the MILFs?

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

Because you don't understand what forced perspective is? Perhaps if the comment was regarding I Ratant's post #248, you might be on to something, but an overhead shot with both items on the same plane as each other an same distance from the camera is NOT an example of conditions for forced perspective.

You could have gotten really creative and said that it isn't even a real photograph. Why? Because you can see that his Nikon Coolpix is sitting on the ground instead of in his hands. The entire scene must be CGI.

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

The black colour thing is interesting. Most of the "I thot I thaw a puddy tat" reports relate to black cats. The cat in Helensburgh was black. The cat I saw in the field in Yorkshire, the one I momentarily thought was puma-sized, was black. I have a feeling the lack of detail and depth on the black coat colour makes it a lot easier to be mistake the size, than if you had a tabby pattern or something like that.

Now, let me get this straight. I can see that Felicity was agouti (or whatever you call that colour in pumas), and most of the real big cat pictures shown have been that colour. The black "big cat" seems to be a cultural thing, and of course we've all seen pictures of black big cats, but I honestly don't know what species these specimens were.

Quote:

We get lots of reports of "black panthers". Hmmm... do you guys mean black leopard or black jaguar? Not really. Many come right out and say they mean a black P. concolor. Wait a second. We really don't have any confirmation that Puma ever shows this melanism. It certainly occurs with the leopard and jaguar, and other felids. But not the cougar. What is going on here? An undocumented color phase of Puma is being seen all over rural America with regional "hotspots".

So, black pumas or panthers are not actually known to exist? Wasn't there a terrorist group somewhere called the "Black Panthers"? Is the whole thing just cultural? Can we tell the next Danny that starts on about black panthers or black pumas that they don't make them in that colour? Which species of that size actually do come in black?

Half the problem over here is that there are very few big cat experts around (and some of them are mad, look up John Aspinall). Most people have no idea what the different species look like, or what colours they come in, never mind what behaviour they might demonstrate. So nobody challenges Danny when he says things that sound authoritative. Personally, I couldn't tell a leopard from a jaguar from a cougar without looking it up. So of course they just lump all the reports of "big cats" together, and start wittering on about breeding populations. None of the so-called experts seems terribly sure what species is supposed to be breeding though.

Rolfe.

__________________"The way we vote will depend, ultimately, on whether we are persuaded to hope or to fear." - Aonghas MacNeacail, June 2012.

So, black pumas or panthers are not actually known to exist? Wasn't there a terrorist group somewhere called the "Black Panthers"? Is the whole thing just cultural? Can we tell the next Danny that starts on about black panthers or black pumas that they don't make them in that colour? Which species of that size actually do come in black?

The term "Panther" refers to different big cats, depending on where you are. In North America, it's the cougar, in South America, it's usually the jaguar, and in the rest of the world, it's a leopard. Leopards and jaguars do come in black; there doesn't appear to be an authenticated example of a black cougar. More in wikipedia.

ETA: Clearly, it's possible that people in the USA may have heard the term "black panther", applied to leopards or jaguars, but assumed it referred to cougars, since that's what they know as a panther.

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
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Melanism has never been truly documented with Puma. We have ancient field reports (Buffon?) of black pumas in Amazonia. We have no bodies or skins. There is one old b/w photo of a very dark puma that some suggest is melanistic. This is inconclusive. Melanism in pumas is hypothetical.

Quote:

Wasn't there a terrorist group somewhere called the "Black Panthers"? Is the whole thing just cultural? Can we tell the next Danny that starts on about black panthers or black pumas that they don't make them in that colour? Which species of that size actually do come in black?

In the real world, a black panther is either a melanistic leopard or a melanistic jaguar. I said real world, because I am excluding the hypothetical melanistic puma. Anyone else would exclude that as well - except for those yokels in the hills.

The "black panther" is a cultural icon without any real woo. The symbol of that terrorist group is a black panther and specifically it is artistically rendered in a way that suggests leopard morphology rather than jaguar.

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

2. (Canadian and US slang) A woman of middle age who actively seeks the casual companionship of younger (typically under 30 years old) males.
"A cougar approached Warren at the Palomino Club and asked for a dance."

__________________Bigfoot believers and Bigfoot skeptics are both plumb crazy. Each spends more than one minute per year thinking about Bigfoot.

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